“A theme for sage-grouse planning in 2018 is recognizing the authority of the individual states in managing wildlife and that plans at the federal level for managing habitat should not be one-size-fits-all,” Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Heather Feeney told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.

The proposal reforms the current conservation plan to give state and local communities a larger say in how the birds are protected, adding regulatory flexibility across hundreds of miles of habitat, Feeney said.

Critics of the new plan say it loosens key protections and puts the greater sage grouse at risk.

Letting slack in the Obama-era regulations may ensure that the bird ends up on the Endangered Species List or disappears altogether, they say.

“These plans show that Zinke will stop at nothing to make it easier for polluting industries to mine and frack every last acre of the West,” Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “This is a huge step backward for greater sage grouse and for hundreds of other species that depend on unspoiled public land.”

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